


Outshrink the Shrink

by deltachye



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, One Shot, Other, Reader-Insert, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 15:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8107690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deltachye/pseuds/deltachye
Summary: [reader x lance sweets]Psychoanalyze a psychologist. Dangerous waters, there.





	

“Hey.”

You looked up from the profile you were writing, peering over your papers to the door where Sweets stood. It was his office, but yours was under renovation due to a discovery of asbestos, so you shared the space with him. He held up two coffees in each of his hands. You smiled and closed the file with relief, placing it to the side as Sweets kicked the door shut and handed you the smaller cup. 

“I was sick of the FBI coffee, so I went out to that 24/7 place outside. Hope you don’t mind double double.”

You took a sip, and although it was overly sweet for your taste, it was better than the old dirt the Bureau served at the upstairs cafeteria. You nodded appreciatively. It was late, perhaps 1 in the morning, but you and your fellow psychologist had a small mountain of paperwork to file through — a gift from the beloved Agent Booth. 

Looking up again, you watched as Sweets shoved aside his blankets and miscellaneous clothing into boxes. He noticed your noticing and gestured apologetically.

“Just, doing some clean up…”

“Yeah, no, I got that.” You suddenly remembered and fished out an old shirt from where you were sitting, it having been wedged into the cushion of your chair. You threw it at him and he caught it, looked at it, and then cringed at the childish Spongebob logo on the front.

“I, uh, this was a gift. Don’t worry. I only watch Spongebob for its fascinating psychological allegories.” He stuffed it into another box hastily.

“I agree. It’s pretty messed up.” You took another sip of your coffee before placing it aside, as not to be rude. “You’re moving in with Booth and Brennan, then?” 

“Well, not exactly. I’m just staying with them for a few days. ‘Till I get my own place. Y’know how it is.”

Your constant need to analyze kicked in despite your weak attempts to hold it back. His ramblings were incredibly defensive, but you didn’t need years of training to notice the redness in his ears and his stiff movements. He cleared his throat and pointed down at the overflowing box at his feet. “Can you help me…?”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.” You got up and picked through his other clothes, collecting and tossing them into a nearby box. You and Sweets then struggled to get the box to the front of his office; but when lifting, pushing, and pulling left you nowhere, the both of you settled for awkwardly walking it around. It was a long and arduous struggle and a literal pain in your ass before he called quits at the door of his office. 

“I’m surprised,” you commented, after you and Sweets had finished catching a breath. He looked up at you, his eyes slightly narrowed as if suspicious, but instead he replied with a questionable grunt. You continued on with your thought. The sugar in your coffee was making your mouth dry, but that might also be your nerves. “I mean, I’m surprised that you didn’t get together with Agent Sparling after you… broke up with Daisy. I thought you liked her.”

He stood, smoothing out his tie, his face looking more uncomfortable than annoyed with your topic of conversation. You inwardly grimaced. They never taught you how to be a good socializer in Quantico. 

“I did, but I’m just not interested right now.”

“Oh.” The tense air was obvious — this terrible hole of a conversation you were digging for yourself was now over — but you decided to go deeper. It was your job to probe incessantly until people caved, but Sweets’ sudden glare made your stomach turn with fear. “I just think… it’s sort of interesting that the type of women you like are quite… vain.”

“D — she was vain, yeah, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t care at all for me. Agent Sparling opened up near the end of the investigation! I don’t like what you’re insinuating about me.” His tone was dangerous, but you pushed on, deflecting his warnings off of you. 

“Lance, I think the type of women you’re pursuing connects to the abuse you suffered as — ”

“No.”

He cut you off with such ferocity that he moved, too, slamming against you so that you tripped backwards into the wall. You gasped to breathe, the push knocking air straight out of your lungs. His hands were at either side of your head, and you could see in your peripheral that they were clenched in fists.

“ _Don’t_ do that. We promised each other that we would _never_ psychoanalyze each other. You can’t try and screw with my mind.”

“I’m worried about you!” You managed to find your words and tried to push him off of you, but he was stronger than he seemed. You settled for clenching your own hands instead. “If your PTSD is so bad that you’re still pursuing the same type of submission you endured, you need to figure out how to go about those types of relationships safely — ”

“I don’t believe this! You’re seriously trying to — no, okay, would you like it if I told you that your singleness is due to your father r — ”

“Don’t you dare talk to me about that, Sweets,” you warned, snarling. “You wouldn’t dare — ”

“Raped you. Yeah? You’re single because you don’t trust male figures anymore?”

“No!” You screamed this, the prickling in your eyes exploding with scalding tears. You mustered the force to shove him away from you, so hard that he stumbled into his coffee table, spilling the drinks onto the ground. You ignored the mess and stalked up to him, grabbing the collar of his suit jacket, your eyes wide, vision blurred with anger. 

“You…! You allow yourself to be stepped on! Do you hate yourself? Well, here’s my diagnosis: you’re weak — you can’t even say no to crappy sex, because you’re _weak_ — ”

“Stop, I swear to god.” His voice was incredibly low and he closed his eyes, inhaling deeply so that his chest rose. You let go of his suit. 

“Is that how you see me?” you asked. You were quiet now, the fight evaporating from you, and you felt like collapsing. “Just some broken girl who got touched by daddy?”

“Don’t — no, don’t say it like that. Come on.” He was pleading with you now, his dark eyes filled with sorrow. 

“It’s our job to study people. We find issues and we find amazing things within the mind.” You looked up at him from the puddle of brown liquid pooling into his carpet. You felt it, but you didn’t bother to wipe the salty traces dripping from your chin. “Am I just an issue to you?”

“How can you even say that? _You_ were the one telling me that I have a problem with the women _I_ choose to like!” He was angry again, maybe even more than before. His body shook and you braced yourself, clenching your entire body.

“It’s because I care about you!” you shrilled, stopping him from advancing towards you. He froze, face dropping to simple innocent confusion as you backed away from him, back into the wall where he’d forced you before. “Dammit, maybe I even love you, because I just can’t stand to see you getting hurt and walked all over all the time…”

“Wait—you _care_ about me?” he repeated, still looking dazed. 

“Unbelievable,” you breathed, looking away with incredulity. “You’ve got doctorates, years of training, tens of awards, but you can’t tell if somebody _likes_ you?”

“Well, then what’s _your_ problem?” He said this in an extremely high voice and threw his hands in the air in an appeal to God. He then pointed at you, his face full with accusation. “You’ve got the same number of doctorates, even _more_ years of study, and you can’t tell when _I_ like you?”

“What?”

All was finally silent in the office for the first time since you and he had started fighting. You stared at him blankly. He crossed the distance and was close to you now, overly so, his hands back at the sides of your head — but they weren’t fists, they were open palmed. Hovering next to your cheeks. 

Your brain managed to get back onto the smooth track of logic as you recounted your experiences with the fellow shrink, and was horrified by the amount of times you could remember the facial, social, or behavioral clues he’d dropped to you for the previous years. You were more disgusted with yourself for dismissing each and every one of them.

He seemed to notice your realization and sighed, dropping his head in defeat, brushing against you. You could literally count each strand of his dark, soft hair. When he looked at you again, he was scowling, but in an annoyed way.

“I tried so hard — I even bought you a freaking coffee!”

“You buy coffee for lots of people,” you said numbly, still trying to process. 

“I don’t text lots of people ‘winky’ faces!”

“I just thought that was just you being stupid.”

“Oh, my god. Okay. Never mind. Never mind! I’m just going to go pack my bags, call the cleaner…” He pushed himself off of the wall, turned and walked away from you, shaking his head with his hands on his hips. 

“I’m sorry.”

You blurted it out without having a chance to plan your next sentences, so when he turned around, you flustered. 

“Uh, I was… wrong. I shouldn’t have tried to shrink you. It was dumb and disrespectful.”

He sighed through his nose and looked down. A slight smile formed on his lips, through, bringing you a great sigh of relief. Your heart twanged with the realization that he was damn cute. 

“I shouldn’t have responded like that. Besides, I’m probably wrong too.”

“I hate psychology.”

He looked up and smiled, widely. “Same.”

You walked over to him, stepping over the puddle. With a slight chuckle, you pulled on his tie, bringing his head down to your height. The kiss you gave him was short, but sweeter than any amount of sugar the world could give, and when you let go he was thoroughly stunned.

“I’ll buy you coffee next time. Semi-colon close parentheses.”


End file.
